Aims and Objectives

Dyfi Biosphere Arts Network A Manifesto

One of the reasons for the establishment of the Dyfi Biosphere is its appropriateness for affirming links between a key area for biodiversity and the surrounding cultural landscape and the people who live there. The Arts Network will be one of a number of thematic groups that are working within the Dyfi Biosphere. The aim of these groups is to develop, promote, and celebrate environmental, social and cultural biodiversity within the biosphere and to sustain the biosphere through their common purpose.

The specific aim of the arts network is to act as an inclusive and innovative platform for sustaining and supporting artists of all types, and at varying stages in their careers, who work within the territory of the Dyfi Biosphere. Although helping artists is a key part of our strategy, the network does not simply serve as a marketing tool or facebook page for events. Rather, as its name suggests, it seeks to promote, engage with, and interrogate the cultural, ecological and environmental agenda of the Dyfi Biosphere, the sole Biosphere in Wales. At its most ambitious, the network seeks to develop an artistic enquiry into how different art forms and artistic practices might create what we call ‘an ecological aesthetic’. Such a unique focus would not only provide artists within the Dyfi Biosphere with a collective identity and shared sense of purpose, it would put those artists at the cutting edge of environmental arts practices both in Wales and throughout the world in general. For us, the Dyfi Biosphere Arts Network is a prototype for a new way of making art and thinking about what it means to exist on the planet. It is our hope that practitioners and institutions interested in ecological art will come to the Biosphere to learn from us, and to share with us. For us, the local is not opposed to the global; it is the global.

The Dyfi Biosphere Arts Network aims to:

Produce a mailing list and internet site putting artists working in the Biosphere in contact with each other

Run workshops and other events with the intention of developing a supportive artistic community